Kasich is massively overrated by this forum. The amount of 20/20 hindsight/revisionist history that people evoke when talking about him is ridiculous. He tries to pass off as a moderate when his views on abortion are some of the most conservative I've ever seen, so I don't believe that everyone would "rally around good ol' moderate John" as he wins over 50% of the vote and clears 320+ electoral votes. He may have won in 2016, but he wouldn't have performed better than Trump IMO.
People were making fun of him in 2016 for staying in the primary too long before dropping out. He has been propped up to be far superior of a candidate than he actually was, and if you were paying attention in the GOP primary you'd see that. Cruz got almost double the votes and Rubio won more delegates than he did.
And I don't have anything against Kasich personally. He's far more respectable than most Republicans, in that he's not a religious nut like Cruz or a d-bag like Trump. The people who prop him up to be more than he actually is bothers me.
As for this result, that's basically what I would have expected.
The narrative that Trump was the "only candidate who could break through the blue wall" seems to rely on us ignoring the fact that Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson, and the vast majority of House Republicans did better than he did.
So are you suggesting that these rural WWC who would only vote for Trump but no other Republican made up some huge population of straight-ticket Republican voters...?
Yeah that's a pretty silly notion.
